


Death Meets a Nuisance

by Sporadic_Writer



Category: Original Fanfiction - Fandom
Genre: May bear resemblance to other depictions of Death, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-07 00:52:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6778129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sporadic_Writer/pseuds/Sporadic_Writer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death encounters a bothersome human while reaping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death Meets a Nuisance

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, I wrote this story several years ago, and I did post it on LJ, but when I returned to fandom a week ago, I reread the story and thought it could be better, so I took it off LJ, and here is the revised version.

Death was here, humans would whisper in resignation and fear and sometimes, to my dislike, glee.

Existing as soon as the first spark of life did, I took my responsibilities seriously. The mortal souls were mine to take, and I would guide them to wherever they belonged. And that was that.

My little black Book appeared in my hand. The humans' various depictions of me had caught my fancy. The brittle yellowed pages fluttered in a localized wind, and the name gleamed in my burnished silver script. 

I waited a pivotal minute, and the despairing cry fell from its peak as the owner's throat suffered a constricting grasp. The air was still and fetid, and I breathed in tandem with the long struggle heading to its end.

The woman's body lay on the grimy floor in lax display, and her attacker gave it a clumsy kick and then another. He prodded her, waiting for a twitch. I watched patiently. So said my Book, so it happened. 

Abruptly, the woman sat up from her sprawl and gasped for breath. She sobbed with heaving shoulders as she crawled from her husband's foot, unaware that it could no longer touch her. 

“Ple—,” she started. “Br-Brad, I'm, I'm sorry! Don't...please, huh.” Her whimpers came intermittently as she tried to take breaths that wouldn't help, and I crouched in front of her, stopping her tortured progress. She startled and nearly looked to her husband for help.

“Do you want to see Amy?” I asked, my voice low, my tone inviting, and my face a vaguely familiar one.

Her worn face lit up, and she grabbed at me. I let her feel the comforting touch of a solid arm. “You'll bring me to Amy?” she asked, with searching eyes and a hopefulness that had long been absent.

I smiled in response and drew her peacefully away, the soul's memories, happy and sad, falling away into nothingness.

 

Stepping into the middle of the alleyway, I read the creak of the decrepit buildings, the muted crush of trash beneath my solid feet, the stench of blood violently thrust from its body.

My Book opened to the right page. Four letters rose together, and I mused over the idea of the husband so quickly following the wife.

My gaze fell onto the body and perceived the distance of time. I considered the darkly clothed figure who was still kneeling by the murdered man. Panting loudly though the human was, the lateness of the night meant little risk of being caught; still, the human pulled urgently at the knife left embedded in the slack body.

On my Book's brittle page, the name still stood starkly, pulsating with the raw ugly color of a poisoned bruise. I took satisfaction in creating a sigh, letting air fill my lungs and rush out in a gust. The murder was a rock thrown into the expected ripples of humanity's history. If I mused about it, the killer's name could come to me immediately, but Judgment is not my domain, so I refrained.

Something moved in the cooling human flesh, and the shadow of a forty year old man pulled himself free from the mess. “What the god-fuck-damn-shit!” he shouted, shaking uncontrollably as he backed away from his oblivious murderer, who had resorted to roughly yanking the knife's hilt to and fro.

“Hey,” I said shortly into the man's face. He threw a disrespectful fist into my stomach. I let free a hint of my power, and I held him tight without a touch. 

“Let me go, fucking freak!” he yelled, wriggling without dignity.

I glared into his eyes, and he quieted as he recognized a predator greater than any other in Earth's history.

Then I smiled at him.

“I'm taking you to see your aunt,” I informed him, and I watched bemusedly as the soul collapsed into the size and shape of a thirteen year old boy.

“Auntie Connie?” he asked tremulously, a mixture of love and sadness unashamedly on his face.

Judgment is not mine.

I drew the soul peacefully away, his memories still lodged within, decisions still to be made when he reached his proper place.

Once my duty was done, I returned to the alleyway and filled my Book with information on all that the location had contained. Then, soon, I was needed elsewhere. My presence began to grow faint, my awareness mostly gone, when I felt something unexpected: a wary tendril of curiosity with an obvious human taint.

I disregarded it.

 

Humans souls are nebulous things, indistinguishable but for the lives that shaped them. I stared into the back of the human currently strangling a larger one.

Their flailing movements brought them to the low table in the middle of the room, and they smashed into splinters of cheap, termite-ridden wood. The small bags of ivory powder fell and thickly coated the carpet, as thudding feet tore them open.

My Book glowed the deep red of a coal's heart, and I indulged myself by rolling my eyes slowly, a gesture I had learned from a human disappointed in what she saw of Death.

Losing the confrontation, the larger human scrambled away and raised an arm in self defense. 

“Just what the hell do you want from me? Money? Here!” He tossed a heavy wad of cash still in its thin white wrapper. “The meth? Just take it then! Whatever you want, just lemme alone, okay?” His voice reached a displeasing pitch as it became apparent that neither money nor drugs would make a difference.

The knife plunged in once, twice, again, again. I waited and contemplated the pulsating lines of the drug dealer's name in my Book. This was the third time. I disliked humans who gained such a taste for killing; they made my responsibilities, and those of the others, infinitely more complex. 

“You're not going to say anything?” The voice sounded a little hoarse and on the young side of human age.

I continued waiting for the soul to be free of its dying body (Jeremy Aldrich, 26, drug dealer, dead from multiple stab wounds, desire...).

The killer rose from the matted floor. “I can see you, you know. I'm looking right at you. I know you heard me.”

The body finished its last convulsions, and the glimmer of a soul about to be released preoccupied me.

“What, so you come to just watch, and that's it? No smiting me for my crimes?” A bitter laugh. “No smiting them for theirs? That asshole goes and gets kids hooked on this shit.” A leaking white bag broke against the wall from the force of a kick.

Still ignoring the tiresome human's ranting, I looked into Jeremy Aldrich for his heart's desire as he writhed on the floor, still caught in the throes of dying.

“Stop that,” I told him, and the soul did as I bid, now lying rigid and facing me. “You want to meet your father,” I said simply.

Jeremy Aldrich's face contorted, and he spat in derision, “Fuck that, I don't care about that loser. He's nothing, probably just some asshole who got himself shanked in a bar fight!”

Aldrich's killer meticulously wiped the bloody knife clean, dark eyes going from Aldrich to me. That gave me pause. It was one thing for a human to be aware of Death; it was another for the same human to see souls. It was vaguely interesting. 

But I had my duty. I began my exit from the mortal world, and the lines of my form grew vague.

Aldrich's eyes roved the dingy room in which he had lived half his life. “I don't want to meet him,” he said uneasily.

Having seen his complete history, I knew better: he'd allowed his father's absence to drive him to seething depths, and he would have to answer for them. But not yet. He needed to come with me, and some souls need something other than kindness to persuade them.

Aldrich saw my eyes harden, and he felt the chill of Death. 

“Last chance, human,” I whispered in an icy breath, “Wander the earth for all eternity, or come with me.” 

For a life spent in the dirt, ultimatums were familiar, and that's what Aldrich needed. He submitted—as they all must—and we left the other human behind.

 

That singular human persisted in being a nuisance. Four more unexpected souls in a month to reap, and I knew the culprit each time. I finally felt the banked fires of irritation grow within me.

Again, I stood, cloaked from most mortal eyes, and observed the cursed human at yet another kill. I considered just reaping this disobedient soul, but I could not overstep. Humans must make their choices after all.

The trashcans smashed together, and a loose lid fell to the floor, where it vibrated on the concrete.

“Hello? Is someone there? Hello?” Footsteps echoed softly against the brick buildings as a heavyset woman cautiously made her way towards us.

I looked. (María Elisa Ruiz, 34, accountant, soup kitchen volunteer, dead...) 

The killer froze on top of a struggling body that attempted to scream for attention. The resulting thin cry was just barely on the side of audible.

Hearing it, María Elisa Ruiz called again. “Are you still there? Do you need help? I thought I heard yelling.”

She rounded the corner while dialing her cell phone and scanning the area.

The killer turned stiffly towards her, pristine knife clenched in a white-knuckled hand. I held my Book open, waiting for a soul, perhaps two...

“Oh, God!” Ruiz shrieked and raised her arms in fearful self-defense as she fell against a rough wall, her face turned away from the figure sprinting into the open streets.

(María Elisa Ruiz, 34, accountant, soup kitchen volunteer, dead...) My knowledge reached its limit, and I left the woman to live her life.

She held a detergent-chapped hand to her breast, as she picked herself up, still shaking uncontrollably, her free hand reaching into her pocket to grasp the beads of her rosary for comfort. She had not yet noticed the beaten body a few yards before her, but she soon will.

“In twenty-two years then,” I murmured into the woman's ear. We would meet again later at the proper time.

 

“Seven.” 

The human jumped up and swung the omnipresent knife into my side. That shouldn't happen, so it didn't. The dark eyes grew wide with surprise and turned from the sobbing nineteen year old girl who was gripping the white shag carpet with a petrified fist. Red droplets from skimmed throat began to drip in a slow line.

“It's a significant number,” I informed the nuisance, who hesitated and nearly turned back to finish the girl with a downward jab of the knife. A flare of my power made it clear that I would tolerate no such disrespect. On the rare occasion I chose to acknowledge a mortal, I expected full attention. 

“You're interfering with my Book,” I explained, breaking down the concept into terms that human minds could probably comprehend. “All seven people that you killed were meant to die in different ways, some later and some earlier. You changed all that.” I didn't bother mentioning the metaphysical reparation that would occur, the tortuous changes that would reverberate through the rest of human existence.

I came to the point: “You make my job difficult.”

“I don't see you stopping me,” the human snapped. “I don't know for sure about the first two times, but I saw you clear as day the third time. You just stood there and watched me without saying anything, not even when I talked to you.”

“I don't judge. That's not for me to do.”

The human scoffed. “Okay, then who does?”

“Exactly who you think,” I responded. The human could decide what I meant.

“So, nobody then. Life's just fucking wrong and unfair and ugly. My sister's husband can beat her until she miscarries her kid. Then he can beat her until she dies too. So, murder, rape, torture, drugs, screwing weaker people over.” The human fisted a handful of long hair, and the girl on the carpet yelled in pain. “That all happens, and that's it?”

I imbued my voice with the rumble of thunder in ancient sepulchers. “Apparently not.” I eyed the human's weapon and arched an eyebrow.

To my bemusement, the human flushed, mouth dropping open slightly, searching for a rebuttal that never came. 

I looked at the injured girl; her heart beat steadily, and her cut throat was beginning to clot. She would keep. Another human life called to me in the distance, and I began to go.

“Wait, you're just going to leave? You, you, but I thought you'd have something to say to me!” 

I considered the human's plaintive face. I could spend half an hour now or spend five minutes at a time intermittently for the next—my Book appeared in my hands, already open at the proper page, and I looked down. 

I tossed my Book away in disgust. This one just had to be one of the longer-lived ones. 

So, for the first time, when I negated my presence, I took a live human with me.

 

The cafe stayed well-lit as dozens of families and couples chattered over their food and drink. Light rock played over the loudspeakers that were carefully tucked behind artificial plants hung by the freshly painted walls.

I held a blistering mug of coffee doctored with one cream and two sugars. The balance continued to pleased me. “Hmm, I've missed this,” I remembered, taking a long sip of the rich liquid and letting it warm my taste buds before swallowing.

I rested easily against the cushioned booth, and I smiled brightly, shadows curling around me. 

The human sat across from me, blinking at our new surroundings. Complete with unused straw, a glass of Thai ice tea stood on the table invitingly.

“Let's talk,” I purred. It was time to take care of this.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was very difficult to write for a specific reason, but out of a writer's curiosity, I want to know how many people notice without me saying what it is. (Granted, I don't know how many people will read this in the first place either.)


End file.
